President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has thrown Brazil’s gambling debate into sharper relief after saying he would support closing down the country’s fixed-odds betting market, describing the spread of online wagering as a social harm that is pushing families deeper into debt.
Speaking in an interview with ICL Notícias, a Brazilian news outlet, Lula said that, if it were up to him, betting would be banned in Brazil, while acknowledging that any such decision would depend on support in Congress. As reported by Agência Brasil, Brazil’s official news agency, he added that the country could not continue with what he called “the uncontrollable growth of online betting”.
Since January 2025, Brazil has opened a regulated federal market for fixed-odds betting, and authorised operators have been allowed to offer services nationwide under rules overseen by the Ministry of Finance’s Secretariat of Prizes and Betting. The framework was introduced to bring a once loosely supervised market under formal control.
Lula’s intervention now exposes a political contradiction at the centre of that framework: while Brasília has spent more than a year building rules for licensing, compliance and taxation, the president is openly questioning whether the industry should exist at all.
Lula’s logic
Lula framed the issue as a matter of public health. Agência Brasil reported that he linked the expansion of online betting to worsening indebtedness and warned of the damage caused by gambling addiction, saying he knew of people who had lost cars, homes, and, in some cases, had taken their own lives.
He also drew a comparison with Brazil’s long-standing restrictions on traditional gambling. For decades, casinos and other games of chance sat outside the legal mainstream. Now, Lula argued, the phone has brought the casino into the home, including to children and teenagers using a parent’s device.
The president also said the sector had a strong influence in Brasília and financed lawmakers and political parties, suggesting that any attempt to change course would face political resistance.
A market still taking shape
The timing is awkward for a government that has already invested political capital in regulating the sector rather than prohibiting it. Brazil’s current legal regime is built around fixed-odds betting, first authorised in 2018 and later expanded and regulated under Lula’s administration through the 2023 law that set the modern framework.
That system was designed to place operators under formal oversight: licensing them, taxing them and subjecting them to advertising, payment and consumer protection rules. It also helped create a new revenue stream for the state. Agência Brasil reported that taxes on online betting and gambling generated BRL 2.5bn ($500m) in January and February this year alone.
Lula’s comments land at a sensitive moment, with Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court due later this month to examine whether the country can still criminalise broader games of chance under a prohibition dating back to the 1940s.
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